The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Kerry GAA firms up its fixtures plan and return to play protocols
KERRY GAA Secretary Peter Twiss told club delegates this week that any player, team mentor, club officer or whoever, that decides to opt out of returning to playing football and hurling over the coming weeks and months is “perfectly in order” to do so and “is to be respected”.
Speaking to almost 80 club delegates via a Zoom conference call - the first of its kind for a Kerry GAA county committee meeting - Mr Twiss was addressing some of the issues that are arising from the GAA’s Return to Play protocols that will see Gaelic games resume in the county and across the country from the middle of July.
Kerry GAA will this week finalise their domestic GAA fixtures calendar for the rest of 2020 after extensive consultation with all stakeholders in the county through a series of meetings and discussion over the last few days.
The final agreed fixtures plan for club competitions is set to be signed off on Friday this week, but it’s not expected that it will deviate too much from the 12-week schedule of games published in The Kerryman last week, despite the GAA authorities adding an extra two weeks to the window set aside for club activity.
Initially, Croke Park stated that club competitions could resume from the weekend of August 1 and 2, but over the weekend, in response to the Government’s decision to bring forward its own re-phasing of the Roadmap for Re-opening Society and Business, the GAA added an extra two weekends to the club window by allowing competitive games to start again on the weekend of July 18/19.
No firm decision was arrived at on Monday night as to how, or if, Kerry GAA would use those two extra weekends in July to move their fixtures calendar forward, but a meeting of the Competitions Control
Committee (CCC) last night (Tuesday) was expected to consider and review all possibilities, before the
Management
Committee would approve the final draft of the new fixtures calendar tonight (Wednesday). The final fixtures programmes is expected to be released by the CCC on Friday.
Speaking to the delegates, Mr Twiss said the “new norm” would not be the same as what has gone before with regard to fixtures and how games will be played and competitions ran off this year, and he asked everyone involved to exercise cool heads and to “go with it” for the moment.
“It would be important for all to recognise that the rules and regulations governing the new fixtures plan will not be what we are used to,” the Secretary said.
“With such a short time-frame, a huge responsibility to put health and safety first, and an extra load on club administrators, there has to be a recognition by all parties that getting the fixtures programme played in an efficient and timely manner needs to be placed ahead of maybe the more mundane issues such as venues, times, dates, requests for postponements, etcetera.
“The CCC may be required to bring forward games, play midweek games, play hurling and football championship games over the same weekend, and so on. I can see difficulties arising over these, in particular with requests for postponements whether it’s a death within the community or difficulties with availability of players, or weather related or some other unforeseen situation.
“There will be a huge load placed on venues in relation to ensuring the protocols governing the playing of games are adhered to. Wer must keep this in mind when putting a fixtures plan in place. Overloading the system needs to be avoided,” he stressed.
“Similarly, the usual policy of accommodating time changes or dates at the last moment for any game at either senior or juvenile level will be severely restricted, as all grounds will have to work to a strict timetable for allowing access to their facilities for both games and training.”
Mr Twiss said that with the Covid-19 virus still a real issue in the community, that anyone involved in the games, be they a player, mentor or club officer, may decide for personal reasons ‘this is not for me’. He said any such decision to ‘opt out’ is perfectly in order and is to be respected.
Furthermore, he said the expectation that a referee, two neutral linesmen and four umpires will be present at every club championship match may not be realistic.
“While the Referees Committee and Co-ordinator will do their best, that is all they can do, and in such circumstances everybody gets on with it as best they can.
“The purpose of these plans it to provide some sort of game time for our players and supporters in as safe and environment as possible. Who qualifies, who wins, where the game is played, when it is played and so on is not, in these times, the main priority.
“It would, therefore, be important that club officers and team management take the opportunity when talking with their players and members to try as best they can to explain the context in which these games are going ahead, and understand the temporary but necessary load being placed on everybody.”